


Horse Trouble

by nogoaway



Series: Superstar AU [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Horses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4856168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nogoaway/pseuds/nogoaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carolina knows her way around a horse. Niner knows her way around a subway. </p>
<p>Wash makes his own jam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Horse Trouble

“I don’t think it likes me,” Niner says, knocking the heel of her boot into the ground for the third time in five minutes. The animal’s ears rotate towards her foot each time she does it, like sonar, only furry. The boots are very tight. Wash told her they were supposed to be that way, but she’s not sure she believes him. She’s not sure she believes any of this, actually. The entire place smells weird, and Niner pretty much lives in a gym. She knows weird smells.  
  
“She,” Wash corrects, and the horse snorts at Niner again, snot glistening on its nose. “Her name is Gloria, remember? And she likes everyone. She’s the newbie gal, aren’t you, Glow?” He pats the horse on her massive neck with a gloved hand. _Wash_ is wearing regular work boots, and he’s been smiling all morning. Niner hasn’t seen him jump once. Rural living’s been good for him, and Niner’s glad, she really is. It’s just. Not right now.  
  
Gloria bares her horsey teeth. Niner’s seen friendlier mugs on the guys from the prison guard’s union who come in on second Wednesdays for submission wrestling. “Okay,” she says “I don’t think _she_ likes me. Is this a race thing? Is this a racist horse?”  
  
“The horse,” Wash says, lip twitching “is colorblind.”  
  
“Don’t test me, punk,” Niner warns him “I’ve been kicking asses taller and broader than you since you were in diapers.”  
  
Gloria’s ears swivel back, but she stands stock still as Carolina comes clattering into the frozen yard at a canter, pulling her horse into a slowing circle around them. It tosses its head, and dances a little from side to side, legs weaving one over the other.  
  
“You guys coming?” she asks, shaking her head just like the horse, vibrating with excitement. She’s sweating a little despite the cold, strands of cinnamon hair sticking to her neck and forehead where they’ve fallen out of the bun.  
  
Niner swallows. The tight clothes look a lot better on Lina. Lina’s completely at home, here— Niner always thought it was a class thing, how Lina seemed to completely lack street smarts. She’s starting to realize it’s more of a country thing. Out here in middle of fuck all western Mass, it’s Niner who can’t find her way out of a paper bag. There are _no buses_. She is trapped here, because Lina is the only one with a car. (“How the fuck does he get around when you’re at work?” she’d asked North last night, over _homemade ice cream_ and whatever the fuck a ‘fruit compote’ is, like jelly only chunky. North just shrugged “Veteran’s carpool. Trail Angels. Everyone around here knows him.” ‘Around here’ apparently translates to fifty miles in every conceivable direction.)  
  
“Your girlfriend’s afraid of horses,” Wash says, rubbing his hand over Gloria’s flank like Niner’s hurt its _feelings_ “Which would have been good information to have yesterday, _before_ we decided to spend all weekend at the farm.”  
  
"I’m not afraid of shit,” Niner says, automatically “come on, hoist me up. Let’s do this.”  


* * *

 

“Where’s the accelerator on this thing?” Niner asks, once they’ve gone around the stupid ring twice and she’s managed not to fall off.  
  
“Your heels. That’s about as fast as Gloria goes, though,” Wash admits, trailing dust as he walks next to them. He’s even shorter from up here. “Unless she’s startled, and she’s pretty mellow.”  
  
Carolina is literally running laps around them, shooting off every once and a while to zig-zag across the ring and hit the pole jumps. It’s very distracting, because whenever she goes over one she kind of stands up in the saddle and leans forward and pokes her ass out and again, the jeans are _very_ tight.  
  
“Why is this fun?” Niner grumbles, and forces her heels back down when Wash pokes her in the knee “she’s having fun. Do I have to be rich for this to be fun?”  
  
“I live on disability,” Wash points out, sounding completely unbothered. North is really rubbing off on him. “It’s an acquired taste, I think.” He glances down at his watch, and there’s the faint rumbling of North’s pick-up coming down the drive. “You can head back with him, if you want. He’s gonna hit the supermarket. I’ll cool her down and untack for you.”  
  
“There’s _maintenance_?” Niner asks, incredulous “these are the worst, most unreliable motorcycles ever—”  
  
Which is, of course, the exact moment the truck stalls out.  
  
The noise shoots, explosive, down the hill and fills the entire valley, like all big sounds do somewhere so quiet and isolated. Niner watches a cloud of birds erupt out of the black treeline. Wash jumps, unsurprisingly, but Niner’s more worried by how impossibly still the horse goes. She has the good sense to lean forward and knot her hands in Gloria’s mane, and then they’re surging forward towards the far side of the ring, where the gate is.  
  
Rationally, Niner knows she’s not going anywhere near as fast as she could in a car, but the suddenness of it, the unevenness of the animal moving below her and how unsteady she feels, swaying and sliding side to side, the cold air whistling past her ears— it all adds up to her hands tingling and her stomach dropping out like she’s clinging to a rocket. And she is clinging— Gloria’s up and over the fence before Niner can make sense of how her stride altered, and then they’re shooting out across the pasture towards the woods, thump thump thumping on the frozen sod. The ground is uneven, nothing like a road— it seems impossible that the horse hasn’t stepped wrong and broken all her legs, the way they’re careening down the hill, and Niner’s absolutely, one-hundred percent sure she’s going to be either clothes-lined or Tarzan-ed once they hit the trees, but the horse apparently has pretty wicked GPS because so long as Niner keeps her head down Gloria rips down the trail like a homing missile, making last-second adjustments that weave them between the trunks, skirting frozen puddles and rocks and roots.  
  
"Mellow my ass,” she shouts, when she’s got her breath back. The horse isn’t slowing down, but its ears are lifting up a bit from its neck. That’s good, right? “Woah, maybe? _Un_ mush?”  
  
Oh, wait. Heels. Niner shifts her weight back as much as she dares and eases her legs off Gloria’s sides.  
  
It takes a good thirty seconds for the horse to slow to a halt, and Niner’s just about decided she vastly prefers anti-lock brakes when the adrenaline starts to wear off. Her legs are shaking. She leans down and rests her cheek on Gloria’s sweaty neck.  
  
"Bad motorcycle,” she gasps, gathering the reins back up. The horse snorts, shaking its head and jostling Niner. “Don’t give me that casual act. Where the fuck have you taken me?”  
  
Clattering behind her, and Niner grips the horn of the saddle tightly enough for her hands to stop shaking.  
  
“Niner? Oh, thank god.” It’s Lina, pale-faced and scared-looking. Even more of her hair has come loose. She slides off the horse so smoothly that Niner’s a little jealous. She’d have gotten off of Gloria by now if she knew how to do it without getting a leg tangled in a strap somewhere. “Fuck, Lacey, I’m sorry.” Lina steps quickly up to Niner’s side, taking hold of Gloria’s reins a few inches below the bridle. Behind her, the other horse nibbles curiously at a curl of aspen bark.  
  
“I’m glad someone’s apologizing,” Niner says, dryly, directly into Gloria’s neck “because the motorcycle has yet to show even the slightest remorse.”  
  
Lina gently coaxes her hand off the leather, uncurls her fingers, kisses her wrist and knuckles. It’s unusually sweet. It’s not that Lina’s not demonstrative, but— Niner realizes with a jolt of surprise that they’ve been dating for two years and she’s never seen Carolina Church worried about her before. There’s never been any _reason_ for her to worry, not about Niner.  
  
“I’m fine, Champ,” she says, and cups Lina’s cheek. Her skin is chilled. Strands of stray hair tickle at Niner’s fingers. “Let’s just get back, okay?”  
  
“You aren’t enjoying this at all,” Lina mumbles, leading Gloria up to the other horse. They sniff at each other, like dogs saying hello. “Are you?”  
  
Niner considers lying, for all of a second. “Well, it’s cold, and smelly, and there’s no 24-hour hamburgers, and the horse hates me. On the other hand, I haven’t had a rush like that since 2004.”  
  
Lina frowns up at her, still holding onto the reins as she hooks her toe into her own stirrup and pulls herself up. “What happened in 2004?”  
  
“I knocked the teeth out of a guy who tried to mug me,” Niner says, sitting back gratefully as Gloria hobbles along after Lina’s horse at an acceptably moderate pace “with a hubcap.”  
  
Lina cranes her head over her shoulder, eyebrows creeping up towards her hairline. “You beat him with a hubcap, or he tried to mug you with a hubcap?”  
  
“Both,” Niner admits, finally letting her shoulders unknot a bit as her heart rate slows “I’m pretty sure he was hyped up on meth, if that helps explain it any.”  
  
Lina’s still staring at her, incredulous. “And you’re afraid of _horses_.”  
  
“How have I not told you this story?” Niner marvels “I must have told you this story. This story is half the reason I’m so certain you’re going to get that car of yours stolen.”  
  
“And yet,” Lina says, steering them back onto the main trail, because she somehow understands the mysterious color-coded symbols painted onto the trees “it’s been two years, and the car has not been stolen.”  
  
“Are we really going to have this argument right now,” Niner starts, and then stops, when she catches sight of Lina’s face, half turned away but clearly slipping back into tormented worry. “Hey. Hey, come on. It’s fine. I’m fine. Country mouse and city mouse, we knew this. We make it work.” Niner reaches over between the horses to poke her in the stomach. Lina’s so ticklish; it’s unfair, but it’s also pretty much guaranteed to defuse her. Niner’s not sure she likes ‘worried Carolina Church’. It doesn’t suit her.  
  
Lina bites her lip, trying not to laugh. “When we get back to the house, I’m telling Wash and North to take a walk. And then I’m going to eat you out until you’re screaming, city mouse.”  
  
“Oh,” Niner says, dumbly. “That’s. Oh.”  
  
“Yup,” Lina confirms.  
  
“So,” Niner tugs the reins out of Lina’s hands and forces her heels back down. “Remind me. Where’s the accelerator?”


End file.
